Yosemite's Environmental Struggles

 

The air pollution affecting the entire world and creating climate change is also severely affecting Yosemite National Park. With rising temperatures, the snowpack has reduced drastically in size and the waterfalls are being affected by the decrease in snow. Air pollution is also affecting the natural plant life in the park. Ozone is causing harmful effects such as trouble reproducing, growth stunting, and reducing the effectiveness of photosynthesis.

The environmental factors affecting Yosemite are a threat to our collective agency. If we don’t take action to reduce the negative factors destroying Yosemite, then we will start to lose the ability to get away from industrialized city life and to experience nature. If things continue to get worse for parks like Yosemite, we might lose a lot more parks in the coming years, and we won't be able to share the experience of nature with future generations. In the future children will grow up experiencing life in bigger cities, bigger suburbs, and small pieces of nature. We need to slow down the effects of climate change and air pollution in order to save the beauty of Yosemite.

The environmental issues plaguing Yosemite can be connected to the idea of Doing What You Love. If you are someone who enjoys getting out into nature and exploring, you must do your part to help keep Yosemite healthy so that you can continue to explore, but if you don’t care enough about it then you will lose the ability to visit such wonderful pieces of nature.

Works Cited

Harrel, Ashley. “What Yosemite Looks Like in 2100 if We Do Nothing About Climate Change.” SFGATE, 26 Feb. 2022, https://www.sfgate.com/california-parks/article/How-climate-change-will-affect-Yosemite-16920719.php. Accessed 8 May 2022.

This article provided statistics that show how bad climate change has affected the park, with things like total snow and water.

National Park Service. “Environmental Issues.” National Park Service, 23 Nov. 2021. https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/environmentalfactors.htm. Accessed 8 May 2022.

The article on this website had lots of information on the different kinds of environmental impacts that are affecting Yosemite as of November.

Rudee, Alex. “Yosemite’s Dirty Air Secret.” NPCA, 19 Sep. 2017, https://www.npca.org/articles/1640-yosemite-s-dirty-air-secret. Accessed 8 May 2022.

This article talked about the air quality issues affecting the visitors of Yosemite and also detailed how bad the pollution has gotten up until 2017.